ㅁ time rolls in like a fog consuming us leaving us wondering where we have been
– a tetractys.
Category: A Daily Poem
Caveat: Poem #2878 “An early summer ritual”
ㅁ Sea. Some rocks. A sein net. The fishing boat. Some men on the deck, reeling in salmon.
– a tetractys.
Caveat: Poem #2877 “Incidents out past the dock”
ㅁ Fish! Swimming in the sea. Going somewhere. And then - whoops! - there's a net: that's all she wrote.
– a tetractys.
Caveat: Poem #2876 “Conspiracy theory”
ㅁ Bright daylight burns the sky for all the world around four AM because the latitude and the season of the year and the awkward tilt of the earth conspire to make the mornings early.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2875 “Babel”
ㅁ As the international journey fades from my recent memory, I'm left with a detritus of unused foreign words that swarm, and pile up against my mind's exit points, making noise.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2874 “The great journey”
ㅁ I start my journey up the stairs, my outlook bold: I'm upward bound. The sun's not shining - no one cares. I start my journey up the stairs: the steps, they lurk, like little snares. I stumble then, a frightening sound. I start my journey up the stairs, my outlook bold: I'm upward bound.
– a triolet.
Caveat: Poem #2873 “An unusable fact”
ㅁ when you are asleep your time slows down to a crawl... but you don't notice.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2872 “Mute witness”
ㅁ in the monkey mind things happen you can't believe you stare, astonished
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2871 “Systems of constraint”
ㅁ morphologically our freedom is quite constrained obligate primates
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2870 “Amid bricks and gold”
ㅁ My mother, in Japan, with a woman who called her 'Florence': then the dream unfolded, and I was looking for cats, searching in schools and bus stations... the air all shimmery like amber.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2869 “What”
ㅁ When I'm alone, I talk to myself, in a continuous patter. But around my deaf uncle, I have to be quiet. If I say something, he'll ask me, 'What?!' Then he'll want to know what.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2868 “Protestations on the matter of the use of hearing aids”
ㅁ "I'm not going deaf! It's just some bad congestion." How can I argue?
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2867 “Being another”
ㅁ The silence deafens, coats the world, as if the head's been filled with earth. The clouds above are curly, pearled. The silence deafens, coats the world, as if, all round, broad wings unfurled - all covering - a whole sky's worth. The silence deafens, coats the world, as if the head's been filled with earth.
– a triolet.
Caveat: Poem #2866 “Genre shift”
ㅁ Too many nonnets! So let's count our syllables an alternate way.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2865 “Events in the AM”
ㅁ Well, once every few weeks, or so, the sun comes from behind the clouds, to illuminate the world: the north window turns bright, in early morning; the reaching trees do battle against light.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2864 “Get lost”
ㅁ In this one dream, I'm driving around. I've got a bright blue rental car, somewhere in vast Australia. I find some Mexicans starting a strange cult near volcanoes. They tell me to get lost.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2863 “Mind of Theseus”
ㅁ The persistence of identity can bother me when I wake up. Am I the same person now, that I had been last night? Maybe I'm fresh, new. With memories given me by old gods.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2862 “The purpose of this place”
ㅁ No, I'm not really into the sun. There's a reason I'm in this place... this cool, misty rainforest that beetles the ocean. The sun annoys me. It's like a weight, pushing down, extreme, hot.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2861 “Transition”
ㅁ Machines covered the planet's surface, an inorganic patina, staining the hills and the seas. They had overthrown those who had come before. Purposelessness occupied spinning minds.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2860 “Gazing out from my window at the sea”
ㅁ A morning's drizzle paints the sea with spots and roundish dapples, green. The gray, cold sky confounds, unfree. A morning's drizzle paints the sea, while trees absorb the gray - that's key - and fish and whales swim deep, unseen, A morning's drizzle paints the sea with spots and roundish dapples, green.
– a triolet. This is something new – I’ve never tried this particular genre of short poem before. It’s pretty highly constrained, which I tend to like, but also repetitive by design, which I tend not to like.
Caveat: Poem #2859 “A lousy Buddhist”
ㅁ Sad! Many mice have died while visiting our well-heated home. I put out traps for them. They might find some kitchen crumbs. But the traps have appealing snacks. Snap! I think: "I'm a lousy Buddhist."
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2858 “Mexican bus dream”
ㅁ There's a certain type of dream I have: it visits me regularly. I call it "Mexican Bus." When I was young, I'd take the bus all over through Mexico. Now I dream bus trips, dazed.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2857 “Jagged”
ㅁ Sleep. Jet-lagged, overwhelmed by work's routine, I've been sleeping lots: twilight through dawn's efforts. Normally I'm up at 5, but lately I sleep much later. I wake up already exhausted.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2856 “Without resolution”
ㅁ In the end, my travels depressed me. Revisiting things left behind, I had to confront losses. Decisions were taken that ended old ways. In this new life, set apart, the past rots.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2855 “Planning ahead”
ㅁ with enthusiastic diagrams I'm planning out my senescence targeted losses of things a whole, long catalog abstract memories fine procedures old journeys new thoughts plans
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2854 “The tasks”
ㅁ I had a lucid dream this morning all composed of raw emotion. I knew that I was dreaming so I set myself some tasks: experience fear; cry in despair; fall in love; know joy; die.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2853 “Inspection tour
ㅁ Back at home: I went off to inspect trees, the various ones I've planted in the ground at spots around my domain: the oak, three maples, cherry, fir these are alive. Others, not so much.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2852 “Crossing the Pacific”
ㅁ Bands of purple line the sky up here beside our flight; below, Japan. We'll leave the sun behind us, and now insert ourselves, stealthy, like angels, into the east and darkness and then dawn. Well, somewhere just south of Kamchatka, I opted to boldly declare a new, liminal approach: an opposition to exaggerations of sentience, and instead, exist. So. Later, over the Aleutian chain, there arose feelings of regret. Baroque significations unfurled their abstractions. Inaccessible, meanings were lost; nothing left, I sought sleep.
– a poem made of 3 nonnets enchained.
Caveat: Poem #2851 “Return”
ㅁ I actually feel less tired - I mean... compared to my expectations. Visiting my friends, perhaps - these friends I'd abandoned - recharged me a bit, left me engaged with living... and with dreams.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2850 “Awake with a start”
ㅁ Then I was so tired on the airplane. I'd doze, immediately dream, enchain strange mental symbols, overdetermined signs, archeologies of lost cities, but not real... just dust, light
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2849 “The drive down from Atherton to Cairns”
ㅁ the tropic rain made downward gestures reaching wildly from bold gray clouds to caress my car's windshield and dodge the slow wipers while the strong trees leaned and cows waited patiently in green fields
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2848 “Arboreal visitations”
ㅁ A flash of green, high up in the tree. Lorikeets sometimes visit, here. It seems an exotic thing, now that I live up north, up in Alaska. Eucalyptus leaves wave; a bird flies.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2847 “Down in Atherton”
ㅁ "You're just wanting to lock me away," my mother said to me, leaving. At the home for the aged, we'd discussed with the staff various aspects of living there. I told mom, "it's your choice."
– a nonnet.